Week 34 in Paraguay Week 2 Mission Secretary

I´ve got about 20 minutes left of my internet time so I´ll try to write an awesome email, but I´m not going to lie, there aren´t so many stories to tell in the office as there were in the field. I did have something super crazy happen this last week trying to get my driver´s licence. I still haven´t driven yet, but I do have my licence, the car has just been in the shop for the last couple of days so I haven´t had the opportunity to do drive yet. On Tuesday, I left with Elder Gage to go and get my licence. First of all, Elder Gage has only been there once. We are in downtown Asuncion with all these crazy streets crossing back and forth and we have no idea where we are. We pass the place we are supposed to go, go back, get lost again and then get to a red light. While we are at the red light Elder Gage decides to call for directions. While he is on the phone the light turns green and he doesn´t see it, so I tell him to go, but he sits for just about 10 seconds without going, this traffic cop comes over and starts hitting on our window. Elder Gage takes off. So all is well, Elder Gage is still on the phone looking for directions when this traffic cop pulls in front of us on his moto and then tells us to pull over to the side of the road. We go over and he comes and starts taking to us and just goes off. Elder Gage told him that it was a green light. The cop tells us that he was directing traffic in front of us and we passed right by him, so we say that he hit on our window during a green light so we thought he was just telling us to go. He starts trying to tell us that he was trying to get us to turn to the right. Then he starts going off trying to scare us telling us we have to pay a ticket of 2,600 mil, divide by 5 to put it in dollars ($520), and then he just keeps adding things every time we say something else. Like he has to impound our vehicle for three days, he has to have our boss come and get it, he has to take a picture of the front and back of the car and one of us, all this stuff. So Elder Gage asks him if we can just settle it right now and the guys tells us he will only take 500 mil and he´ll let us off, we get all of our money together and we have 160 mil and we tell him that is all we have and he won´t budge, so we end up giving him all of it because I had other stash with me. So we leave, find the place and get my licence and then when we get back the the office we talk to our lawyer I work with and ask him what would have been a good price to pay him with, and he started telling us just how much the cop was deceiving us, how the worst driving ticket you can get is just over 1,000 mil and what he said we did wasn´t even close to that. We shouldn´t have given him any more than 100 mil. He told also that the cops here have no authority to take vehicles or even driver´s licence, so the cop couldn´t have done anything. We should have just told the cop that we were going to call our lawyer and wait for him to get there and then we would settle it, and then after you say that he would have taken just 100 mil. The lawyer told us that he thinks the cop pulled us over just to get money out of us just because when he hit our window he saw we were Americans. Anyway, there is a fun interesting government story for you, that´s what Paraguay is like, and the next time we will only give him with up to 100 mil, but we were breaking a mission rule because only the non-driver in the car is allowed to talk on the phone, so maybe it was just our little consequence, anyway, it makes for a pretty good story, and now I am out of time, but I love you all, and I will try to have some more cool stories to tell next week.

PS. The package hasn´t come yet, but it should come straight here when it does, but don´t worry, it´ll probably take about 3 weeks, no matter what they told you, because they can´t account for how long it just sits in Asuncion, it probably is in Paraguay, but the question is when they are going to deliver it.